Still Life
by ShadowedStar
Summary: Post-DH. Moving on after losing your best friend is hard, but when that friend is your brother, there are times when it feels impossible. George must learn how to live, love, and laugh as an individual. Percy Weasley and Angelina Johnson co-star.
1. Chapter 1

We buried Fred in a nice little spot down by the river. Mum and Dad picked it. They didn't ask me, but if they had, I would have approved. I liked the fact that it was someplace he'd loved in life; we'd had many a pick-up game of Quidditch there, and tested no fewer than seventeen products for our joke shop just three feet from the spot where he would be forever laid to rest. The old tree stump was still there; I had wondered if Mum and Dad would uproot it to make more space, or if they would stick a grave marker on top of it. I couldn't decide if the fact that they hadn't was them being courteous, or them thinking it was too much effort to bother with.

I almost slept through his funeral. It wasn't deliberate, though it wouldn't have bothered me. He was already gone, so he wouldn't even notice and I would get to avoid all the stares and "Poor George"s. It was bad enough that Mum had taken to flinching whenever she laid eyes on me. I didn't think I could stand the rest of the family doing it.

Ron walked into our - well, mine, now - room while I was laying in bed, staring up at the ceiling and trying to motivate myself to move.

"Get out," I said.

"The funeral's starting in fifteen minutes, George."

"I know. Get out."

"But Mum said-"

"I don't care what she said! Get. Out!"

He muttered something to himself and left. I rolled over to stare at the wall instead. Maybe I just wouldn't get up. I didn't want to see him in that box; that wasn't Fred. Fred had already left us, back at Hogwarts.

Footsteps on the stairs told me Mum hadn't had the last word in yet.

"Get up, Georgie," she told me, coming over and pulling the covers off. I shrugged and just curled up into a ball. I didn't say a word. She hovered over me for a moment, then grabbed my arm. "Come on, I said." She tried to pull me up, but I just went limp. She tugged uselessly for a few moments, then humphed. "Georgie, we don't have time for this. Everyone else is out there-"

"Everyone else isn't his twin. Nobody else is going to have everyone staring at them pityingly; nobody else is going to have everyone wondering how they can stand to look in a mirror without it reminding them of Fred. Fred dying is bad enough; I don't want to be a freak show for the family to focus on instead on top of it."

"You're not going for _them, _George," she snapped. "You're going for Fred. Now get up, get dressed, and get over there or so help me-"

"Molly," Dad said from the hallway, "please calm down."

But it was too late. She'd already burst into tears again. Now that Dad had arrived, though, she Disapparated, leaving him to deal with me. Guilt settled over me like a shroud, but my soul was too heavy and lethargic to care.

"George," Dad began, but he didn't get much further than that. He sighed, and sat down next to me. The big clock downstairs chimed eleven. It's ticking marked the seconds so loudly, it seemed the floor should shake. But it wasn't that the clock was so loud, as that we were so quiet. "It gets better," he finally said.

I shrugged. What would he know about it?

"You don't have to come, but it would mean an awful lot to everyone else if you did. It would mean a lot to him, too, wherever he is. But I won't pressure you. I just think that you'll regret it terribly if you never get to say your last goodbye to him."

"It's not Fred in the casket. It's just a body, just a chunk of rotting meat. What made Fred _Fred _is gone. His soul's not there, nobody's home. Saying goodbye to the corpse isn't saying goodbye to _him. _Nobody got to do that."

"Yeah, maybe. But maybe not. His soul lived in that body for 20 years, and that leaves traces. Besides, you're not completely identical. Just because the rest of us can't tell the difference doesn't mean that you won't regret not being able to see his face once more." Dad stood up. "I just don't want you to make a choice to spite the rest of us. We all know how close you two were."

He Disapparated and I cursed under my breath before getting up to get dressed.


	2. Chapter 2

I found out about the funeral from Katie and Alicia. Apparently, Fred's family had decided not to invite me. Guess he took getting dumped harder than I'd thought, especially given that that was two years ago. Then again, knowing Errol, it was entirely possible the old owl had just gotten lost or tired and given up.

"Are you two going?" I asked them. Katie shook her head.

"We didn't really stay in touch with them after graduation," Alicia said. "It would feel too weird; like we're intruding."

I nodded. It made sense I guess. But at the same time... "Poor George. I wonder how he's going to get on without Fred."

Alicia shrugged. "Dunno. We should send him a card or something, reach out to him."

Katie frowned. "After two years of not really talking, except to drop by the store? It might seem like we're only getting in touch because we pity him. If I were him, I'd want some space right now, especially from well-wishers. Maybe in a week or two. Give it some time for the sting to wear off."

I nodded, but I couldn't agree. Maybe it was because I'd always been closer to them than the other two, but somehow I just _knew _that the last thing George needed was to be left alone. He'd already be feeling lost without Fred. He didn't need to feel abandoned by his friends, too.

I made some excuses about remembering an errand I needed to run and said goodbye to my two best friends. I was already in suitably funereal black-and-white, so I Apparated straight to the Weasley home. If I knew anything about that family, I knew Fred would be buried somewhere nearby. And if I was really lucky, I would make it just in time.

I hit the ground harder than I meant to and looked around. The house was silent. A breeze whispered through some trees down by the little brook that ran through the property. I stood very still and waited for it to die down. A few moments later, the air grew very still, and I could just make out voices singing hymns down the way. Over it all, I could hear Molly Weasley sobbing. I squared my shoulders and set off to see what was going on.

At the crest of the hill, the view opened up before me. Maybe thirty yards away, they were lowering Fred's coffin into a hole in the ground. Molly cried hysterically, holding her wand high above her head. Arthur had an arm around her to comfort her, but his face was grimly set as he held his own wand aloft. I saw Ginny sitting with Harry, and Ron sitting with Hermione; Bill with a beautiful blonde woman, and Charlie with a dark haired baby in his arms. I wondered whose it was. Percy sat stiffly at the edge of the row, looking deeply uncomfortable. When had he reconciled with his family? And then I saw George.

He looked terrible. His complexion was ashen, and dark circles ringed his eyes like the raccoon that his and Fred's Patronuses had taken after. He seemed shrunken, diminished, and had lost a lot of weight. My heart broke for him as I watched him struggle to raise his wand above his head, as he closed his eyes and grimaced against the truth. When he opened them again, the shared magic of the assembled family and friends had entombed Fred in a small but tasteful rose granite tomb. Already ivies were beginning to climb over the top - probably Molly's doing; Fred had always said she had a unique aptitude with plants. In time the entire thing would collapse into dust.

I bit my lip and began to walk down toward the gathering as the priest struck up one more hymn. Percy looked over and saw me; I put a finger to my lips and he nodded slightly, turning back to face the tomb. George Disapparated before the song had ended. He hadn't seen me, so I knew he wasn't running from that. But I was concerned for him. I needed to know where he had gone.

The hymn ended, and the gathering scattered. Percy jogged up the hill toward me.

"Don't advise dropping in just now, Angie," he said. "Mum's likely to kill anyone who interrupts."

"I wasn't planning on crashing, Percy. But Katie and Alicia told me, and I couldn't not come. I loved him, too, you know."

Percy gave me a skeptical stare.

"Just because I dumped him doesn't mean I didn't care!" I said, trying to keep the fraying ends of my patience firmly in line. "I just didn't want to lead Fred on. Anyway, I came because of George."

"He just left."

"I noticed. Any idea where he's gone to?"

"Probably the joke shop. He's taken to hiding out there since the battle. Claims he's doing inventory and figuring out how to keep it open, now that Fred's gone. Says Fred was always the brains behind the operation."

I thought back to our Hogwarts days; Fred had always been the ambitious go-getter, scheming and dreaming while George happily tagged along. George had lost more than just a brother or a twin, he'd lost his direction and focus, too.

"Someone should go and check on him, don't you think?"

"He has the place barred against all of us. We have to knock on the door, as if we were Muggles, and he never opens it."

"Do you think he's barred it against me?"

Percy shrugged. "Considering none of us have seen you since you dumped Fred? I'd say probably not."

I nodded. "I'd best be off then."

"Angie, before you go-"

"Yes?"

"It's good that you showed up. Nobody's come to visit George. Lots of condolence post, lots of offers to visit, but none actually made good on. I know he's been turning them down, but I wish more of them would say to hell with that and show up anyway."

I nodded. "Most people don't know how to deal with death. I imagine they're relieved not to have to figure it out."

Percy shrugged. "Nobody knows how."

I had nothing to say to that, so I turned on my heel and Apparated to Diagon Alley.


	3. Chapter 3

I had to follow Angelina. I needed to know if someone could get through to George. He was wasting away and Mum and Dad were only making it worse, trying to get him to talk to them when he so clearly didn't want to. A part of me thought he might talk to me; I'd been separated from them all for several years, and was only just now finding the way to reintegrate with them. But then, Fred had died just after accepting me home, so who knew what kinds of blame George might be heaping on my head in his innermost thoughts?

I wasn't brave enough to find out.

But Angelina... She had always had a way with the two of them - an ease of manner - that nobody else could mimic. Alone of all the people who knew them, she was never fooled when they switched places. She had never called Fred George or George Fred. She never fell for their pranks, either. I remembered Fred waxing poetic about her, and how she actually saw them as individuals, never just "the Twins" or "Fred&George" where they were one unit forever joined together by an ampersand and a birth date. If she couldn't get through to George, I didn't know of anybody who could, and I feared we'd be holding a second funeral in short order. He had already lost well over three stone. He was bound to be malnourished already; losing another couple stone would certainly kill him.

I Apparated to Diagon Alley and followed behind her, taking care not to be seen. I didn't want to have her feeling pressured by my presence.

She skipped up the steps to the joke shop and unlocked the door with magic before slipping inside. Bill, Charlie, Ron, Ginny, and I had all tried that trick on various occasions - he must have warded that against us, too, if it worked for her. I bit back the urge to curse him under my breath; even if he could never hear it, I needed to remember to try not to be too frustrated with him. We were all affected by Fred's loss, and there was no way for anyone to be more so than poor George had.

I counted to fifty and then slipped inside as well. The interior was silent as death, and a light coat of dust had settled over all of the merchandise. Blinking, whirring, flashing displays sat dormant, waiting for a flux of customers with energy and money to spend to bring them back to life. Sun filtered weakly through the shutters on the windows at the far end of the room. The whole place felt like a mausoleum. Even the picture of the two of them on opening day was dulled; their photographic alter-egos had wandered out of the margins of the frame, and all of the guests were dull-faced with shadowed eyes.

I heard footsteps on the stairs and ducked behind a display case. Angelina came back into the main sales area and frowned, hands on hips, before catching sight of a door labelled Employees Only behind a large display advertising Bottled Daydreams. It was cracked open slightly, and light leaked out into a small pool on the floor across which a shadow moved frantically back and forth.

"Gotcha," she whispered and opened the door. I held my breath, hoping that she would succeed.


	4. Chapter 4

"_Expelliarmus! Petrificus totalis!" _I shouted reflexively, disarming and stunning the intruder. I didn't know who it was or how they'd gotten in here, but I figured anyone who had taken the effort to break in deserved whatever they got.

There was a loud crash as their stunned form knocked over several boxes I'd stacked behind the door yesterday. They were all Fred's things - old clothes, business cards, random trinkets. I hadn't had the heart to go through them, and it had seemed like too much effort to stop Mum and Dad when they decided it all needed to be packed up and stored. I'd warded the shop against them after that. I still wasn't ready to part with the last traces of his existence.

I picked my way over, careful not to step on anything lest I break something I couldn't replace.

"Angie? _Finite._ What are you doing here?" I reached down and helped her sit up. She shook her head and laughed.

"Thought you could use a friend. Is that how you greet all of your visitors?"

"Sign on the front says closed; for all I knew, you were a thief. _Accio Angelina's wand. _Here."

"Thanks." She examined it briefly for any damage and pocketed it. Then she climbed up to her feet, tucked her hair back behind her ears, and gave me a once over. "You look like hell, George."

I chuckled a little. She'd always had a talent for speaking the truth regardless of consequences. The way everyone else had been tiptoeing around me lately, I found her bluntness refreshing. "I hate to say it, but I kind of am." She caught me in a hug before I had time or enough presence of mind to slip out of reach. I patted her back half-heartedly. "How did you find out, anyway?" I asked, and squirmed out of her grip.

"_Daily Prophet _obituary. He'd have hated it; not an ounce of silliness to be found anywhere in the issue, let alone that page."

"Mum wrote it."

"It showed."

"I meant the funeral, though. It was only supposed to be family and close friends."

She bit her lip, and I immediately wanted to take the statement back.

"And I'm not a close friend?"

"I just meant-"

She shook her head and raised a hand to cut me off. "I know what you meant. It seems a lot of people can't understand that you can love a person enough to want the best for them without being in love with them. We were going to kill each other if we stayed together much longer. That, or destroy the world."

"Yeah. Mum seemed to think inviting you would just be an 'upsetting distraction', I think Charlie said."

She frowned. "Am I?"

"Not to me. We were all friends. And for what it's worth, I think he deserved the dumping."

Angelina laughed. "So do I. ...Katie and Alicia told me. About the funeral."

"Why didn't they come?"

She shrugged. "They didn't feel like it was appropriate, since they haven't really stayed in touch. They were talking about sending a card for now, and visiting when you've had a chance to start adjusting..." I flinched, and Angelina hastily backpedaled. "I'm sorry, I just meant, they think you should be spending this time with your family, and that it wouldn't be polite to intrude. We all know how your Mum can be."

I nodded and began picking up the boxes she had knocked over. She knelt down to help, but I waved her off. "Please, sit down. This won't take more than a moment. Would you like something to drink?"

"Just water, if you don't mind."

"Sure." I finished stacking the boxes and headed straight for the kitchen.


	5. Chapter 5

Well, I'd bolloxed it.

He'd been talking to me, slowly relaxing, even beginning to visibly let his guard down, and then I had to go and imply that Fred's death would be something he'd ever adjust to. As if anyone could ever get used to that kind of a loss. I still wasn't over the death of Bubbles, my pufferfish, and I'd been six when Mum had sent him down the toilet to Fishy Hell. Bubbles was one mean bastard of a fish, let me tell you, and I still get pangs of nostalgia whenever I walk past an aquarium, almost fifteen years on. I couldn't even begin to imagine what George was feeling.

I frowned as I watched him wander toward the back of the room. He walked like an old man, shuffling listlessly across the floor, slouched forward as if it took too much energy to straighten himself up.

"Oh, Georgie," I whispered under my breath. "What am I going to do about you?"

He shouted something over to me, but since noise doesn't travel so well around corners, it sounded like gibberish.

"Be right there!" I shouted back, and carefully made my way across the scattered debris of packing peanuts and cardboard boxes. "What did you say?"

"I'm all out of ice, is that okay?"

"Yeah, it's fine."

He held a short, stout glass out to me as he filled a second one. It was half-full of tepid water. I took it gratefully, using the fact that he wasn't looking at me at all as cover to shoot a glance around the small kitchen.

There were dishes overflowing the sink. Most were barely soiled, and I knew from many years of sitting together at Hogwarts that neither of the twins had ever been particularly tidy at the dining table. That could only mean that he hadn't been eating much. Honestly, given how much weight he had dropped, I wasn't surprised in the least. The windows in here were shuttered, just like the ones in the front, except here the dust was caked on thick enough to turn the white paint grey. Knives and forks littered the counters. A half-empty bottle of firewhiskey peeked out of an otherwise bare cabinet. The rubbish bin was full to overflowing, and I could make out at least one extra large, empty glass bottle of firewhiskey in amongst the Madam Bechamel's No-Cook Home-style Meals cartons and Sir Borborygmus's Bachelor Bakes dinner trays, most of which were still half-uneaten. I hadn't noticed much of a smell, and realized he must be containing it with a bubble charm, since the flies swarming around the bin were unable to leave a two foot radius.

"Would you like some help tidying up?" I offered, putting my glass down and taking out my wand. "Looks like you've got the flies under control for now, but why tempt fate, eh?"

George glanced at me, his eyes disturbingly vacant, and shrugged a shoulder. "If you want."

If he had screamed at me to get out already and leave him alone, I would have been less concerned. He was only a bare millimeter above being a zombie. It was like his soul had flatlined.

I waved my wand and waited patiently as the bin emptied itself, and the dishes began scrubbing themselves. When they finally settled into a comfortable rhythm I dropped my arm and turned back to George. He had gone back to the boxes he'd been sifting through when I walked in and he petrified me. I sat down across from him.

"What's in there?"

"Samples."

"Of?"

"Some stuff we were working on before we had to get the hell out. I'm surprised the Death Eaters didn't burn this place down."

"Even evil people need a laugh sometimes. Otherwise they get all angry and start trying to take over the world." He gave me a pained look. "Okay, okay, not funny. I'm not as good at the humor as you are." I reached over and picked up one of the little vials. The tiny parchment label was written in Fred's finest copperplate printing. "Shrinking Shortcake?"

"Dad brought a Muggle book home from a raid when we were kids. Something about a girl named Alice, goes wandering in a place where different foods make her grow and shrink. We thought it might be funny to try for a special Halloween line, and were tinkering with different flavors. Never did hammer out the kinks. Fred though a bit more essence of mugwort would help with the uncontrollable puking..."

He trailed off and threw the vials back into the box. His hands were shaking and he covered his face with them. In a heartbeat, I was up on my feet, pressing him down into the seat I had just vacated. He didn't resist. I wrapped my arms around him and rocked back and forth on my heels, making soothing sounds. He didn't cry or speak or do anything to indicate any sort of reaction. My heart broke for him.

* * *

><p>Author's note: I figure that since this is the fifth chapter, it's as good a time as any to point out that if you're enjoying this story, a review would be nice. :)<p>

Also, in case anyone was wondering, the title comes from the kind of art where people pile fruit and other junk into a bowl (or something) and paint the scene. In Spanish, it's known as 'naturaleza muerta' - literally, 'dead nature'. Not entirely sure how significant it'll be beyond the symbolic layer since I'm working without a pre-planned plot or outcome here besides the fact that JK has indicated that George and Angelina eventually end up married (with a son named Fred), but I just thought I'd share in case.


	6. Chapter 6

What on earth was going on back there? The curiosity was killing me. I'd managed to follow along as George petrified Angelina, then they talked a bit, and then everything went quiet. And not a good kind of quiet, either, but a peculiar kind of quiet. When they started talking again it was well muffled.

At least they'd probably be too busy to notice me? I stole out from behind a display of Anti-Dark Arts charms and tiptoed across the room, peeking inside. Angelina had a very worried expression on her face as she cradled George in her arms, rocking him gently. He stared woodenly across the room. A box of vials had been knocked over and spilled across the work table; a few of the vials lay shattered on the stone floor. Fortunately, it looked as though they had been empty when they met their untimely ends.

"I'm fine, Angie," George protested, squirming slightly. "Really."

"You don't have to lie to me, George," she said, but let him go. "_Reparo._" The vials on the floor re-fused themselves as she sat down across from him. "I felt like I'd been surrounded by Dementors when I heard the news, and I was only his girlfriend for a bit more than a year and a half. I'm not going to make you talk about your feelings and all that bunk, but you don't have to pretend to be alright when you're really not. Not with me. "

George grimaced, then stood up. "It's been nice seeing you, Angie, but I should really get back to work. There's a lot of stuff left to catalogue and sort, and I've let it slip for too long."

I couldn't help it, I laughed at Angelina's poleaxed expression. If looks could kill, George would have been wishing for one of those instead.

As it was, I laughed a little bit too loudly because George whipped his head around to look before I had a chance to conceal myself.

"What do you think you're doing here?" he demanded. "I've specifically said no family.

"Relax, I didn't bring Mum. Or anyone else."

"Yeah, but if one of you starts showing up, soon enough the whole lot will think they can come waltzing in here anytime they want, moving things and getting in the way and-"

Angelina put a hand on his shoulder. "Percy just told me how to come find you. He needed out of your Mum's smothering for a bit, so I told him he could come to Diagon Alley with me, as long as he spent the time somewhere else and let me know when it was-"

"Five thirty," I supplied. Fortunately, I always had a pocket watch these days, and had checked it about twenty minutes earlier. Convenient holdover from my days at the Ministry: I could estimate time almost to the dot. The Minister had always been obnoxiously fussy about when he took his tea and how long it had been steeped for. Prat.

"Five thirty, yes," she agreed, looking relieved that I had caught on.

George looked dubious, and glared at each of us in turn. "Could have told me that," he told her. "What did you need to leave at five thirty for?"

"I promised Mum I'd check in on Gran; she's working a late shift at the hospital tonight, so she can't do it herself, and Sophie's in Yorkshire for the weekend."

"She alright?" George sounded concerned, but the way Angelina had said it, it was just matter-of-fact.

"She had another fall. She'd just finally healed from the last one, too."

"Another? How many does that make now?"

"Five? I think? Everything will end up fine, I'm sure, but right now it's all just a bit dodgy. Mum keeps trying to convince Gran to go into a home, but Gran's fighting it. I wish she'd just swallow her pride and go with it. She won't move in with us, or let one of us move in with her, so it's really going to end up being the only option, I'm afraid."

"Was it the stairs again?"

Angelina frowned and shook her head. "No, the kitchen. The floor was wet, and she went down. Boom, fractured her hip. They've got her in another cast and on bed rest, but she's like me only a million times stubborner. It's not working very well."

Oh. That would explain it. I wondered how long this had been going on for, that George was in on it. Whenever Mum mentioned Angelina, or any of the others Fred and George were friends with, it was always to get a bit irritated that they didn't seem to have stayed in touch much.

George smiled, but it was half-hearted. "Well, go take care of her then. It was nice to see you again."

"I'll come back tomorrow, promise."

"Sure." It was clear he didn't expect her to make good on it.

"Maybe I can help you get things sorted up back here."

"It's all in Fred's organizational system, it's kind of hard to figure out-"

"I dated him for a year and a half. Trust me, I figured it out. It was a matter of self-preservation."

"Oh?" I asked. This I _had _to hear.

"Chipmunk Chocolates and Canary Creams look an awful lot like real sweets. Fred once mixed up one joke box with one real box; he swore it was an accident, but I still think it was deliberate. Anyway, if I hadn't remembered that he used the purple foil for the fakes and the scarlet for the real, it would have been one hell of a Valentine's evening. Anyway, I'd best be going."

She Disapparated. George fixed me with an icy stare. "So why were you really lurking out here? Eavesdropping for Mum?"

"Oi! I need away from her, too, you know. You don't have a monopoly on Mum-derived annoyance. If she clings to me one more time and weeps about how glad she is that I'm home, I may explode."

He snickered. "You brought it on yourself, Perce."

"Believe me, if there were a way I could _un-_bring it on myself, I would. So what were you and Angelina talking about anyway?"

"Nothing much." George bent down and scooped up the vials Angelina had repaired. "Why are you still skulking around?"

"Thought you could use an extra pair of hands to move stuff around, now that she's headed out."

"No."

"I won't talk, I won't do anything you don't tell me to do, I won't tell Mum, and I will fiercely deny any allegations that I was here helping you if anyone should so much as hint at it. Treat me like a house elf, if you like, and let's get on with it. I'd rather not go home, and there's not many places I can go where the company'll understand that I don't particularly feel like chatting."

He wavered for a moment, hesitating- Something in his expression told me he was going to shut me down even at that. As he opened his mouth to say no, I quickly added, "I'll even make something better for dinner than whatever boxed Madam Bechamel or Sir Borborygmus fare you were planning on eating tonight?"

He shrugged. "Fine. Deal. Take those boxes over there. Open them up, and write what's in them on the sides. I'll get to them later, but I need to know what's inside first."

"Deal."

At least tonight he wouldn't risk splinching himself by working late, not eating right, and staggering home exhausted. Now if I could just get him talking...

I opened the first box, transfigured a candy wrapper into a quill, and began cataloguing.

* * *

><p>Author's note: Made a minor change to chapter 5 (mentioning it here because it carries over) - I switched the filler line about macaroni and cheese cartons and TV dinner trays into something a bit more wizardy (brands of Insta-food packaged by the wizarding equivalent of Betty Crocker and Chef Boyardee: Madam Bechamel and Sir Borborygmus.)<p>

Fun facts: Bechamel is a kind of cream sauce popular in French cuisine. Borborygmus is the sound your stomach makes when you're digesting. No joke.


	7. Chapter 7

Color me surprised: Working with Percy was actually pleasant.

He kept his mouth shut, which was honestly enough to commend him, but he also worked quickly and efficiently, getting out of my way without me needing to say anything, and tidying up as he went along. Frankly, it was loads better than the one misadventurous afternoon when Mum had sent Ron to help and he'd accidentally released a cage full of Pygmy Puffs. I could have killed him. I'm still finding the little blighters in my sock drawer.

When he finished his stack of boxes, he started on dinner using some of the frozen ingredients Fred had left behind. We'd always done the cooking side-by-side with our experiments, but with only one pair of eyes and hands, I didn't want to risk dividing my attention and ending up with unusable experiments _and _inedible food. It had been ages since I'd had something that wasn't pre-packaged and only required a wave of my wand to render supposedly fit for consumption. Not that it much mattered; all food tasted the same to me these days. It was about all I could do to gag enough of it down to keep myself running.

There was just so much work to do.

A gnome bit me as I opened up a box with some of the new line experimental sweets. "Stupid bugger!" I flung it across the room, and it bounced off of Percy's head. He doubled over laughing, until the gnome crawled up his trouser leg and bit him on the shin.

"Oi! Get out of there!" he shouted, doing a funny little dance as he tried to kick the gnome off. I chuckled a little bit. It was more laughing than I'd done since Fred and I had had to close up the shop and go on the run. How long ago was that, even?

Right, two months. We'd been running and fighting, where we could catch Death Eaters and Snatchers, for about a month and a half, before we fought in the battle of Hogwarts. It was hard to believe that everything had only happened two weeks ago. It felt like years.

"Stupid git," Percy grumbled, interrupting my thought process. "Damn gnome made me burn the Yorkshire pudding."

I shrugged. His tone wasn't nearly as put out as his words said he should be.

"There's probably a spell for that; if all else fails, we can just scrape off the singe," I said. "Rubbish is to your left."

"That's a casual attitude to take to food," he said, grinning.

"When was the last time _you _had Sir Borborygmus's cooking? Besides, it's got nothing on the stuff Fred used to make. He'd forget which cauldron was the one for dinner, and which was the potion of the week. Led to some right bizarre evenings, let me tell you."

Of course, it had also led to some brilliant inventions. The Canary Creams had been a direct by-product of a botched birthday gift for Mum, and the Puking Pastilles were a serendipitous accident created when we were trying to perfect a way to bind a Jelly-Legs Jinx to a potion. It never did work, but the Skiving Snackboxes were one of our best inventions, so we called it a victory. And then there was the time he'd accidentally spilled some of the Bottled Daydream mixture into a cauldron full of chicken soup when we both had the flu. Three hours later, we both swore we'd never speak of it again. I still have nightmares about it. Turns out chicken turns the daydream potion more than a little dodgy.

"Well, if that's the case, then dinner's ready." He held out a large plate heaping with food. It smelled delicious, but it was probably more than I'd eaten for the last week. My stomach flopped over a few times, already resisting.

"Thanks, Perce," I said, taking it anyway and setting it down beside me as I continued to sift through vials.

He watched me for a little while as he ate his own. When the steam had finally ceased rising from the gravy-soaked Yorkshire puddings and sausages on my plate, he gave me a funny look.

"It's better when you eat it while it's still warm."

"I know. I'm just not very hungry."

"At least eat one of the puddings and sausages, and half of the vegetables and mashed potatoes. It's less than one of Bechamel's ghastly boxed trays."

"I'm not hungry, Perce."

He waved his wand at me, and the vials in my hand jumped back into the box in front of me, which sealed itself. I glared at him.

"I was in the middle of something."

"They'll remember where you were. Eat."

We had a short staring contest, but I gave in after a few moments. It just didn't seem worth the effort to argue with him. "Yes, _Mum._"

"You're my little brother, Georgie. You'd do the same if it was Ron or Ginny in your place."

Just because it was true didn't mean I had to like it. I shoveled peas and carrots into my mouth as quickly as I could, forcing myself to chew and swallow even as my stomach protested. In a corner of my mind, I was aware that it tasted alright, but it was just such a struggle to eat it...

I put the plate down and rushed to the rubbish bin just in time to throw up. I could feel Percy's eyes on my back the entire time I was heaving up the contents of my stomach. When it seemed like I had finally finished, I closed my eyes and sat down on the floor. It was too much effort to do anything else.

"I guess my cooking's worse than I thought it was," Percy said, forcing a laugh. "Here." He pressed a cool, damp cloth to my forehead. He must have summoned it, because it didn't stink like the dishrags on the sink did.

"Thanks." I took the cloth from him. It was soothing. I felt like the skin on the rest of my body was crawling, and shivered.

"You're not getting ill, are you?"

I shook my head. "No, I just can't handle rich food lately. The gravy's what did me in, I think."

"That and the speed-eating." Percy ruffled my hair and I opened my eyes to glare at him. He laughed. "You don't scare me, Georgie. Don't waste time trying."

"Don't challenge me."

"It's not a challenge. You're my brother. Anytime you try to scare me, I'll just remember you as a tot. It's very hard to be scared of a wizard you remember seeing in nappies." I shook my head, but that made me feel sick again, so I stopped and closed my eyes again. "So what's really got you puking your guts up and hiding out in the shop and not talking to anybody? Mum said you nearly slept through the funeral; I presume it's for the same reasons as all the rest of it."

"There's a lot of stuff to do. I can't let myself slow down or stop working, or I'll fall behind. It's just me left to do the work of two. I can't fall behind." If I do, it's all over. The last connection I have with my twin on earth; the last thing we ever made together. The shop _can't _fail. Besides, I promised him.

Well, we promised each other, really, but in the end it works out the same way. The shop never closes. The wizard wheezes never end. We'll keep being the practical jokers, even if it requires carrying on solo, no matter how much it hurts or how hard we have to struggle. The end. No ifs, ands, or buts.

"Have you thought of hiring someone else?"

I shook my head. "Won't work. It'd take too much to train someone; that's time I should be using getting the shop ready to re-open. Even Madam Malkins is back already."

Percy sighed. "You're no use to yourself or the store or anything else if you work yourself into illness. Angie said she'd come back and help you tomorrow. For what it's worth, I'm willing to help, too. I won't tell Mum," he added emphatically, shaking his head at me. "I need the escape from her clucking, too. But right now, you need to get some water, try to eat something - slowly! - just so you have something to run on, and then you need to sleep."

I opened my mouth to protest, but he cut me off.

"No arguing. I'm calling big brother privileges on this one."

I was too tired, still feeling too sick, to bother with fighting him on it. I shrugged. "Fine."

* * *

><p>Author's note: Since modestlobster asked, and I figure that they can't be the only one wondering, I didn't find 'borborygmus' myself. My dad did, years ago. One of his friends had a cat with that as its name. I'd forgotten the word, but I knew that there was one meaning "the sound the stomach makes when digesting food", and sort of how it was pronounced. A few trial and error Googlings later, and you have Sir Borborygmus. I love the English language. :D (Although, strictly speaking, the word is derived from Greek.)<p> 


	8. Chapter 8

Gran was sleeping when I arrived, so I set myself to work mopping floors. It was something to keep my hands busy while my mind wandered, at least. I was glad that Percy had followed me; he had enough of the infamous Weasley stubbornness that I was fairly certain he wouldn't leave George on his own.

"George must be cursing him by now," I muttered to myself. Still, it was better for him not to be alone right now. He'd never spent more than a few hours at a time truly on his own in the past, and while he and Fred would often make ridiculously melodramatic claims that the other was stalking them and they just needed some space, they still never gave it to each other. In a few days, when George had settled into a routine, at least, then I'd feel better about it.

"Who's there?" Gran called down the stairs.

"Just me," I shouted up.

"Angie? What are you doing here?"

"Mum asked me to come over," I shouted, putting the mop down and running up the stairs. "You alright, Gran?"

"Fine, fine. Now help me out of this infernal bed. The news is going to be on the telly in fifteen minutes."

"But the doctor said-"

"I know perfectly well what that doctor said, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let that stop me. I've been on this earth eighty-seven years; I think I know what these old bones can handle!"

I grinned. There was that famous Martins stubbornness. "Alright, Gran, but hold still, or this won't work."

She nodded and grumbled a bit to herself, then finally nodded once at me. I took out my wand. "_Levicorpus," _I said, and floated her gently down the stairs to the sofa. Being a witch certainly had some advantages, that was for sure. Without magic, Mum and Sophie usually spent at least half an hour trying to haul Gran down the stairs without hurting anyone.

"You're a dear, Angelina," she said, picking up the remote control. "Now what is it that's keeping Jackie?"

"Mum had to work a late shift tonight at the hospital. She doesn't expect to be out before you've gone to bed."

"And where's your sister?"

"Sophie's gone up to Yorkshire with her boyfriend."

"Is this the one with the motorcycle and the bad haircut?" Gran asked suspiciously. "I don't like that one. He's got more'n a bit of ruffian in him."

"Sophie can keep Thomas in line, I assure you."

Gran gave me a look and then turned back to the telly. I laughed and went back to my mopping. I had finished it and gotten about halfway through the dishes when she rolled into the room in her wheelchair.

"Gran, you're supposed to let me help you switch from the couch-"

"Nonsense, girl. I'm not an invalid. What's got your goat, anyway?"

"What do you mean?"

She looked pointedly at the dish and soapy sponge in my hand. "Ever since you've been allowed to do your mumbo-jumbo outside of that Piglumps school-"

"-Hogwarts, Gran-"

"Whatever it's called, you've never done chores by hand except when you were upset. You're just like your mum that way. Only do chores when you're unhappy about something. So what is it?"

"I'm just a little bit worried about a friend, that's all."

"Mm-hm. Girl friend, or boyfriend?"

"Boy. Just friend, not boyfriend."

"What happened to him?"

"His twin died. He's pretty wrecked over it."

Gran nodded. "Sickness? Accident?"

"He was killed. I think George thinks he could have stopped it if he'd been there with Fred. They only ever got hurt when they were separated from each other. Together, they always had each other's backs."

"Is this the brother of that boy you had that awful relationship with three years ago?"

"The very same," I said, laughing. "And it wasn't an awful relationship-"

"Your fights scared the pigeons, and they don't scare."

"Alright, so we were a bit loud-"

"Cindy up the road called after one of your go-rounds to let me know you'd collapsed one of her souffles. It was hardly 'a bit'."

"Okay, now you're just exaggerating-"

"Angelina Marie Johnson! I do not exaggerate."

I grinned. God, I love her. "Gran, Fred and I were good friends. We just weren't very good as a couple." Too similar, really; like matchsticks and gunpowder, we both liked starting fires. "But we did love each other, in our way. And for my part, I still do."

"But now you're worried about his twin brother."

I put the dish and sponge down, and turned to her with my hands on my hips. Never mind the suds soaking into my pockets, I could magic those out later. "I know what you're thinking, and that's not it. George has always been a good mate. I know how hard I took the news, and Fred and I were only closely involved for two years, tops. The rest of the time we were just friends. Nobody knew him or understood him like Freddie did. It's not possible. And now that's gone. I want to be there for him and help him through this, but I just don't know what to do."

Gran sighed and shook her head at me. "You can't solve other people's emotions, Angie. Jackie tried it with your dad, and it just made both of them crazy. You can't help people who don't want to be helped. When did the other boy die?"

"Two weeks ago."

Gran scoffed. "Let him wallow for a bit, girl. Two weeks is fine to still be upset, as long as he's getting out of bed and showering and eating and acting like he intends to go on living and not just waste away to join his brother. It took my cousin six months to stop wearing mourning black when her sister died, and they hated each other."

"But I just feel so useless."

"That's your problem, not his. He needs you to be his friend, not his mother. He's going to get enough of that from other people. Go and be with him, but don't be a pushy brat like you usually are. Let him open up to you, and you'll do far more for him than all of the 'you can do this' and 'it gets better' pep talks in the world."

I nodded. It wasn't bad advice. "Thanks, Gran. I'll try to remember that."

She smiled at me. "Good girl. Maybe bring him round for tea sometime, and I can feed him full of cookies. It's been far too long since I had any attractive young men come for a visit."

I rolled my eyes at her and gave her a hug. "I'll see what I can do."


	9. Chapter 9

After George finally went to bed, I headed back down to the office storeroom, taking care to move as quietly as possible so I wouldn't keep him awake. The walls between the store and the small flat above it were very thin. I figured at the least I could tidy things up some so that when morning came and it was time for him to get back to work, he'd be able to find everything. Whether or not he'd still let me help in the light of day and with Angelina around, I still didn't know, but I intended to make myself as helpful as possible so he couldn't just send me away.

Surveying the mess, though, it was nearly impossible to figure out what belonged where. I knew that the twins had always had their own way of doing things, but this was madness. Putting dishes away seemed like my best bet. I'd almost finished when Angelina Apparated back into the room.

"Thought you were going to stay round your grandmother's?" I asked.

"I think I lost an earring here. I just noticed it missing and couldn't find it at Gran's. I know I still had it on when I left the funeral."

"Well, you're welcome to look for it," I said.

She cast a summoning spell and a small pearl earring flew across the room, and hit me in the head on its way to her palm. She giggled. "Sorry, Perce."

"No matter. It's better than the gnome bites earlier."

"Gnome bites? You know what, I don't need to know." She put the earring into her pocket. "Why did you follow me here earlier?"

I shrugged. "It seemed like the thing to do. I'm concerned about him, too."

"You were gone from the family for two years."

I flinched, but stood my ground. "And you dumped Fred in the bitchiest way possible. I think we're even."

"That was different."

"How?"

"Because I dumped him so we wouldn't entirely destroy the affection we'd always had for each other. You left your family to go power grubbing at the Ministry."

"You dumped Fred at Easter! By owl!"

She glowered at me. "You weren't even there, what would you know about it?"

"I've heard plenty. Mum's been filling me in on all that I missed. How could you do that to him?"

Angelina sat down. "Did your Mum also tell you how he put my little sister in hospital with one of his charmed sweets?" She bit the words out, every one filled with fury.

"He would never-"

"He had a cruel sense of humor at times and you know it. Don't you remember him testing things on first years, or were you that out of it? Yes, it was an accident – he had no way of knowing that she would have an allergic reaction – but he was utterly unrepentant about it! "She's fine, so all's well that ends well" he said. Well, he wasn't there when she stopped breathing. He wasn't there when she turned blue. He wasn't there when her heart stopped and she had to be revived. He finally showed up at the hospital just as we were taking her home. And then he tells me that all's well that ends well? Don't you dare tell me I overreacted, Percy, or that I was somehow in the wrong."

I swallowed hard. No wonder she and Fred had always managed to escalate their fights to shrieking decibels. She already looked ready to pounce on me and rip my throat out with her bare hands, and I at least knew when to back down. None of my little brothers had ever learned that skill. "No, Mum didn't tell me. I don't think she knew that part."

"No, I don't suppose she would." Angelina crossed her arms over her chest. "Only Sophie, George, and Fred were there when it happened. George at least had the presence of mind to take her for help by Side-Along Apparition while Fred came and told me. If it had just been her and Fred, she'd have died."

"You know how Fred was, he was probably just utterly freaked out and didn't know how to say anything. I really don't think he meant it in a cavalier way-" I began.

"I know he didn't. He wasn't _bad. _He went too far, but it was an honest accident. But the way he said it, it came out that way, and I just couldn't take it. I was scared, and I needed him to understand that. Maybe he did and maybe he didn't, but what happened happened, and it was the final straw in a long line of incidents that I don't particularly care to remember. I dumped him so that I wouldn't end up hating him. As a friend, I could keep his bad points at a distance, brush them off, pretend they didn't matter so much, but as my boyfriend? All I could think was what if we stayed together, and, God, if we got married, or had kids, would he still be that way? And of course the answer was always yes, because people don't just up and _change_and now he's gone. I'll never be able to tell him how much I miss him, and how much I regret that we never worked it out..."

I summoned a handkerchief and handed it to her when she surreptitiously wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "I think he knew."

"Thanks," she mumbled. "I try not to think about it much. But it still makes me crazy. And it doesn't help with your Mum not even sending me a bloody invite to say goodbye-"

"Well, to be honest, she has a rather skewed perception of what happened. It was very noble of you, I think, not to tell her. She never would have recovered from the blast to her mental image of him. He did have his sharp edges, though."

"But he wouldn't have been him without them."

I laughed. "No, he definitely wouldn't have been."

She sighed. "Sorry for spewing all that at you. Please forget it ever happened."

"Consider it done." No point in antagonizing her about it, but this did certainly put an entirely different spin on her offers to come and help George. "Look, I don't want to bring up a tough subject, but after you and Fred went your ways, I heard that you and George kind of did too. Why did you come back now?"

"George and I kept in touch by owl; he and Fred left Hogwarts so soon after our breakup that there was no other way. Without constantly running into each other, Fred and I just drifted, but George kept me up to date about what was going on. I've never had any better friends than the two of them. And nobody has ever been there for me more than George has. You don't just abandon someone like that when they're in a spot."

I nodded. "Well, I'm glad you came back. I don't like how withdrawn he's been, and he'll probably talk to you."

"Don't get any ideas, Mr Weasley," Angelina said. "I'm not going to turn into your family's spy."

I rolled my eyes at her. "I don't want a spy. I want my brother back to normal."

The clock in the shop chimed one in the morning, and I got up. "I should probably leave. I'm going to catch hell from Mum for disappearing all day, and it's better I do it now than later. She'll at least have to keep the volume down at this hour. You staying here?"

Angelina shook her head and gave me a strange look. "Why would I do that? George doesn't need a babysitter."

I shook my head. "No; no, I don't suppose he does." I wasn't sure why I'd asked her that, but a part of me sort of wished she would stay.

"I'll meet you back here in the morning?" she asked me, getting up as well.

"I'll be here as early as I can be," I agreed.

"So will I." Angelina hesitated for a moment, then Disapparated.

* * *

><p>Author's notes: Sorry I've been gone for so long. Work got crazy, and then I got into Pottermore and it sort of took over my life. (I'm a Gryffindor! I'm so happy my life isn't a lie.)<p>

Anyway, there will be more coming soon for sure. I'm glad to see that you guys like Angelina's gran, and that you're enjoying the story so far. Do keep reviewing – it really makes my day, and helps me improve my writing. :)

Also, no worries to the person who mentioned 'please don't make Angelina get pregnant for some random reason'. I have no intention of using a deus-ex-machina to get George and Angelina together. No surprise!pregnancies and shotgun weddings out of the blue. I hate that as a plot device.


	10. Chapter 10

I wasn't actually tired when I went up to bed; I just wanted some space. Percy meant well, and he was a lot less cloying than Mum, but my tolerance for social interaction had just plummeted over the last few weeks. I still felt like hell, too - my stomach was flopping around in my belly like a suffocating fish unwilling and unable to just give up and surrender to the inevitable, and I couldn't remember the last time my head had ached so terribly.

At least my room was blessedly dark, and I could navigate it without needing to turn the light on. I still hadn't packed Fred's stuff up, and it was one thing to know it was there, to know where it was, hell, even to climb over it on my way to my own bed, but it was another thing entirely to have to see it. It was bad enough that the room still smelled like gunpowder and citrus fruit from the last experiment we'd done together before going on the run. I'd told him we should have worked on it downstairs, but he never did listen to much sense.

I stepped in spot of goop on the floor - a memento from the very same project - and swore under my breath. The stuff was stickier than treacle fudge and troll snot, and unsticking charms were completely ineffective against it. The experiment hadn't gone quite as expected, but Fred's joy at what it had produced had been unmatched except for the incident that led to Nosebleed Nougat. He never had told me what he had in mind for it, though, and I didn't feel much of an urge to experiment with it.

As it was, I didn't particularly care about all that at the moment, just that I was ill and wanted to lay down and pretend that everything was as it should be; _not _waste my time trying to carefully peel enough layers of skin off the bottom of my foot so that I could free myself without causing injury. At least I had my wand easily to hand; the last time I'd stepped in one of these foot-traps it had been clear across the room. You try attempting to retrieve a wand with a pillow and a broom handle.

I aimed a cutting spell at the goop - hoping that it might work to loosen it a bit, or maybe just slice off a couple layers of skin real fast so I could make a pitiful attempt at healing myself that would last long enough for me to deal with it when daylight came and hopefully brought me some more energy - but, true to my running score from the last couple months, Lady Luck was playing against me. The goop ignited, and yet still managed to retain all of its stick. Worse, none of the spells I tried to put it out worked.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I screamed like a little child when I realized that there was a very good chance I was going to end up with severe burns from this experience. As if "Poor One-Eared Georgie, losing Freddie" wasn't bad enough, now it was going to be "Poor Horrifically Scarred, One-Eared Georgie, Stuck Without Freddie to Make Him Feel Better About His Hideous Misfortune". Maybe I could hire myself out to the circus as a living example of Murphy's Law.

It sounds awful, but a dark corner of my mind almost hoped that I would come out of it gruesomely disfigured. Then everyone else would have some other disaster to talk about than Fred's death, and I wouldn't have to see his face every time I looked in a bloody mirror. I was getting dangerously tired of being the screen for everyone else's projections of angst. I knew, somehow, that the reason they kept talking to me about Fred's death even though I never said a word about it if I could help it was because they couldn't handle it on their own. They had to push it away, focus on me, to be able to handle it. The inevitable result, and this stays between you, me, and the flaming troll snot giving my foot second degree burns, is that I was hoping for another disaster to get everyone talking about something else - because as long as everyone kept reminding me of what happened, I was going to keep on wallowing, and they were going to keep reminding me in efforts to console me, and it was going to be a cruel, destructive spiral to psychological oblivion.

Somehow I managed to have all these complicated thoughts in the space of about three seconds flat before the door to my room slammed open. Angelina took one glance around the room and summoned a box of some white powder which she dumped on the fire. She opened a window while it fizzled out into choking smoke and then a filmy haze within moments. I blinked at her in the sudden darkness, trying to process this sequence of events. I was so confused that when I opened my mouth to thank her, all I could say was, "Thought you were at your gran's."

"I came back. She wants me to bring you over for tea at some point."

"Does she? That's nice," I mumbled as she turned on a lamp. This situation was too weird and raw for me to say something a normal person might. I mean, Fred's old girlfriend, my old friend, was standing here in my room while I was in singed pajamas with my foot stuck to the floor like a prat and I couldn't figure out when she had arrived. "Thanks for putting out the fire."

"Wasn't about to let you maim yourself," she said. "What was that stuff?"

"Fred's last laugh, apparently. How did you know water wouldn't work on it?"

"I figured you'd have tried aguamenti first. Do you want me to take a look at your foot? I'm not ace with healing, but I might be able to help a little."

"This stuff is damn near impossible to remove, I'm stuck to the spot until I can detach my foot from the floor. It was a cutting spell that started it on fire."

Angelina frowned. "Any idea what's in the stuff?"

I searched my brain, trying to remember all the things we had thrown in there. We were chaotic potioneers at best, taking shortcuts and making substitutions at random no matter how carefully we had planned beforehand. It just wasn't in our nature to follow set paths.

"Lacewing flies, sulfur, orange blossoms, daffodil petals, lemon peel, pixie dust, mandrake leaves, billywig stings, cranberries, mistletoe..."

"Cranberries and mistletoe? What, were you making something for Christmastime, to dissolve the tree after everything was done perhaps?"

"I don't know. It was Fred's idea. There may have been more added to it, but I either don't remember or I wasn't in the room."

Angelina laughed. "You two are properly mad, I swear. But I have an idea. Do you have any eggs in your fridge?"

I stared at her. Of all the daft questions she could be asking, she picked that one? "I don't know."

"Wait here, I'll go look."

"I have to wait here, I'm stuck to the floor!" I shouted after her. Oh, my dignity. At least she had a high level of discretion; if Percy or Ron ever heard about this, the twits, I'd never hear the end of it. My foot was really beginning to kick up a fuss, though, from being stuck in the same position, lit on fire, and covered in whatever that white powder had been.

(_Haha, kicking, geddit Fred? _a traitorous corner of my mind whispered. It had been doing this quite a lot lately. _Of all the foot related humor in the world, I go for kick. I'm pathetic._)

I was debating between sitting on the ground to at least take my weight off it and remaining standing in fear that more of this troll snot from hell would stick to my butt and then Angie and I would really have ourselves in a state when she came back with a bowl of egg whites. She picked up the box and dumped the remaining white powder into it, then mixed it together into a sort of paste with a fork.

"What are you doing?" I demanded as she began to smear the stuff onto the floorboards around my foot.

"I figure, from what you said you'd put it in, that the stuff is probably pretty acidic. This will neutralize some of the acid, since egg whites and baking soda are both bases. And it's kind of like putting peanut butter on chewing gum to get it out; two sticky things tend to cancel each other out, I find."

I didn't say anything. Whenever anyone started talking in Muggle I kind of blanked out; I just didn't have dad's love for their weird ways of coping without magic. At least it seemed like a better guess than anything else that I could come up with, and, given that she was trying to help me get unstuck when she was under no obligation to even be nice to me, I didn't want to look ungrateful by arguing. I was still surprised when it succeeded, though.

"Blimey, Angie, you're brilliant. Where have you been all my life?"

"In the girls' dormitory across the hall at Hogwarts," she answered without missing a beat and winked. "You look a proper mess, George. Did the fire get you badly?"

"Just startled me. I was hoping for a set of wicked scars I could tell fanciful stories about to my future nieces and nephews - can't let Bill and Charlie have all the fun - but alas, no luck this time."

She gave me a stern look that told me she wasn't believing it for a moment, but she mercifully didn't press the issue. Good old Angie, always knowing where to draw the line. I was so relieved I wouldn't have to fight her on this that I could have kissed her.

"I guess I'll leave you to it then," she said, and turned away.

I'm not sure what came over me just then, but I was suddenly struck with a terrible fear that she was going to leave me and never come back. Before I had thought of an excuse or an explanation, I had grabbed her hand and whispered "You don't have to."

She swallowed hard and stared down at our clasped hands. I forced myself to let go and cursed myself silently ten ways from Tuesday. Her gaze flickered up to my face for a brief moment and then flitted back down to the floor. We had made eye contact for less than half a second, but it had been enough for me to see the worries in her eyes.

"Listen, George-" she began, shifting her balance from one foot to the other. She always did that when she was nervous about saying something that might be taken the wrong way.

"I just meant," I started quickly, trying to cut this off before it got to levels of awkward that would be sustained, even though I had no idea what I could say for myself. "I just meant it's good to see you again. Earlier. It's been a real relief to see your face. Letters aren't quite the same as talking. You know?"

The tension around her eyes broke and she smiled wide at me. There was still a shadow of something in the air around us, lurking, but it had fled out the open door and down the stairs, retreating to its dank cave along with most of the smoke from the fire. "Yeah, I know. I missed you a lot. After. Everything. Yeah." A pause, then words tumbling over each other in a rush to escape her lips before she swallowed them down again forever: "Let's not ever go that long without seeing each other again, please? I never thought I could miss a friend so much."

I nodded and she hugged me, squeezing tight. My stomach, still weak from all the puking I'd done earlier, gurgled a slight protest but, as it didn't seem urgent, I ignored it. I hugged her back, wanting to keep the warm, solid _reality _of her presence there for as long as I could.

"Get some sleep, George," she whispered after a moment, and kissed my cheek. "I think you need it."

* * *

><p>Author's notes: Okay, I'm a terrible personauthor/updater, take your pick. I was laid off from my job at the end of last summer and writing had to take a backseat to finding a new one. I still don't have a permanent position, but I've got some steady temp work going, so now that I don't have to worry about how I'm paying my bills and feeding myself, I can write again! So here is the first of my VERY overdue updates. My apologies for taking so bloody long, and thank you to any and all of you who have come back after my long absence. I hope you end up thinking that the wait was worth it!


	11. Chapter 11

_When did things get so complicated between us?_

That was the only thing I could think as I closed George's door behind me and leaned against the doorjamb. Being around him never used to be this strange. A gulf had opened up between us, filled with silence and secrets and all the whispered thoughts we couldn't share now that we were no longer carefree students with the world lying open at our feet. Now, even standing next to him I missed him and the days when every touch and glance and silence wasn't filled with strange loaded meanings that neither of us had intended to put there.

"Just be there for him," I murmured to myself, Gran's voice thundering in my ears. How could I do that if I was afraid of the awkward moments? I felt a very poor Gryffindor.

Still, there was nothing to be done with it until morning. I took a deep breath and Apparated back to Gran's. Mum was sitting on the sofa, still in her nursing scrubs, her feet propped up on the coffee table as she watched the weather report and sipped tea out of a chipped porcelain cup.

I sat down beside her without a word, folding myself up into my usual space at the far end of the sofa. Mum took one look at me and muted the weatherman in the middle of his announcement about a freak snowstorm blowing up in Cardiff. She didn't say a word, just looked at me expectantly.

"Gran told you."

Mum nodded, and gestured to the silver teapot in its scarlet cozy on the coffee table. There was an extra teacup, a cheery yellow one that had been mine since earliest childhood, waiting and already containing two lumps of sugar. I smiled weakly and poured some of the lavender tea over it. The smell conjured memories of garden tea parties with Sophie and the Lintel twins across the way, back when life had been simple, before Dad left and Mum had to move us all in with Gran.

Mum put a hand on my shoulder and just gave me one of her Mum Looks. Her dark brown eyes were large and sad and tired, watery from exhaustion and glowing slightly blue in the reflected light from Gran's telly. Everything she could possibly have said, ever, on the matter of Fred's death and George's current state was communicated in that Look.

"I don't want to talk about it," I said. I picked up my teacup and leaned back into the worn sofa cushions, closing my eyes against the present as I sipped the hot, fragrant liquid. It burned my tongue, but I ignored it. As long as I was still sipping, I had an excuse to avoid words.

"You're so much like your father," Mum said, and I nearly choked on my tea.

"What?" I gasped out between coughs. She never spoke about him. None of us ever did. He had walked out fifteen years ago and never looked back, so we'd returned the favor and burned his memory right out of our home. All that had remained of his presence had been a few photographs, two stuffed toys, and the surname of Johnson. This was the first time Mum had mentioned him at all since I'd hit double-digits.

"He never wanted to talk about things that hurt, either, or even acknowledge that they existed. He wanted to be left alone so he could smash them to pieces, burn the shards, and bury the ashes, then tell everyone he had been fine all along. He thought courage meant avoiding showing pain, that pain was a weakness."

"Sometimes it is," I said.

"Sometimes it's a mark of great strength, too," she said, pushing a few of my cornrow braids back behind my ears. "You loved that boy, Angel. It's okay to miss him."

I put my half-empty teacup down on the coffee table, glaring at it as tears prickled at my eyes and I tried to blink them back. "It won't bring him back. It won't fix what happened between us, won't take back the fact that my last words to him were fury. It won't help anyone or change anything. Best thing to do is move on."

Mum slid closer to me and pulled my head to her shoulder. I let her put an arm around my shoulders and hold me close like she used to when I was little and had nightmares.

They used to plague me nightly, horrific visions of destruction rising up out of my unconscious mind. Nobody ever figured out why I had them, but the only thing that stopped them was sitting like this, letting my mum hold me while she hummed sailing songs from the tropical islands she had spent her teens on, seeking adventure. She still smelled like coconuts, cloves, and cinnamon, an exotic, fragrant perfume she had concocted on one of the islands and wore as a memory of brighter days in a land of sunshine and palm trees and white sand beaches stretching on into forever. I'd never been very good at hiding what I was thinking or feeling when we had these quiet moments, and that smell - while familiar and comforting as ever - just unlocked everything I ever felt about everything. It was a recipe for disaster, really. After everything else that had happened that day, I was still clinging to control by the most fragile of threads, and this just shattered that tenuous grip.

Mum didn't say a word as I cried and cried and cried some more. I cried for Fred; I cried for George; I cried for myself. I cried for Hogwarts, destroyed in a battle of epic proportions. I cried for the dead students, for Harry and his friends, for everyone who had watched Hogwarts, our home, be destroyed by one man hell-bent on forcing the world to his whim, opposed only by a handful of teachers and students forced by circumstances to become soldiers in the face of desperate, overwhelming evil. I cried because time waits for no one and it marches on no matter how hard we try to stop it. I cried because, against time, we are powerless slaves in the face of a cruel despot driving us ever forward. I cried for lost innocence and broken dreams and the destruction of everything I had thought I knew and understood about the world.

Through it all, Mum hummed the old songs and rubbed my back gently, rhythmically, lulling me into calm the same way she had done every night when the nightmares attacked, every night until I went to Hogwarts.

"I'm too old for this," I muttered finally, wiping my nose and eyes with the back of my hand.

"Be still, Angel," Mum whispered. "You're never too old to feel. In the end, our emotions and experiences are all that we truly have. They're the only thing we can take with us."

I wondered what zen islander she had picked that comment up from, but I didn't really want to know. For all I knew, _she _had been the zen islander. I sat up, pulling away from Mum's arms; it was too tempting to stay there and keep crying and wallowing. She watched me, and I looked at her, trying to read the past in her tired eyes and greying, close-cropped hair. It was so hard to picture her as a young woman, carefree, wandering under a tropical sun in cotton sarongs and flimsy sandals, laughing at the antics of island children and sea birds. For the first time in my life, I wondered if she regretted giving up that easy, shining life to come home to England, marry my dad, and try to be a responsible adult when she found out she was pregnant with me. She'd said before that it was a hard choice, giving up her travels, but she knew she couldn't raise a child on her own and wanted to be closer to her own mother if she was going to have to bumble through it on her own. But did she still dream of coconut palms and flower necklaces, pineapples floating on green waves?

Would I always dream about Hogwarts and the carefree days of Quidditch practices and sneaking down to the old boathouse with Fred and George?

"When was the last time you ate?" she asked, wiping my cheeks with a tissue she had pulled from the box on the coffee table. "I can make you some dinner."

"I'm fine. I'm not hungry."

She nodded.

"I don't know what to do about everything, Mum. Everything is so broken."

Mum took my hand in both of hers. "Breathe. Take two pieces and some glue, put them back together. Then add the next piece. Eventually a whole will emerge. You can't rush healing."

"Fred died thinking I hadn't forgiven him. There's no glue strong enough to glue those pieces together, and magic doesn't work on things like that."

Mum gave me another Look. "You loved him, and he knew that. He would have known you'd forgiven him, too."

"We never spoke after-"

"That doesn't matter. He loved you, too. It was plain for anyone who saw the two of you together. There was real love between you, and where there's that kind of love, there is always forgiveness for the asking. You were both just waiting for the other to have the courage to ask."

"So much for _where dwell the brave at heart. _Someone should tell the Sorting Hat," I murmured. Mum laughed.

"It takes more courage to confront those we love than the most formidable armies this world has ever seen. You would have found it in time, one of you. And who knows what would have happened." She sighed wistfully. "I always thought I'd see you married to him one day."

"Mum!"

"Don't _Mum_ me. You were mad for each other, that was obvious, and his heart was in the right place, even if he had rough edges. His brother was more even-tempered, but not flashy enough for you. You've always liked them bold."

"They have to be, to keep up with me," I laughed.

"That they do," Mum said.

"You really think he knew I'd forgiven him?"

"Do you think he forgave you?"

It was such an unexpected question that it brought more tears perilously close to the surface, but they didn't spill. I didn't answer for a long time, wanting to make sure I wasn't deluding myself, but Mum was right. We'd always had explosive fights, but we'd never remained angry for long after they blew over. It was never anger that kept us apart, just shame at how awful our behavior had gotten. I nodded.

"Then there is no question for me," she said and kissed my forehead. "Take it one day at a time, Angel. That's all that you can do."

* * *

><p>Author's notes: Here's another one; I got inspired by a song I was listening to and decided to put up two in quick succession to make up for the long absence. Enjoy! (And please review if you have the time. Thanks!)<p> 


	12. Chapter 12

I'd Apparated to a field about a mile and a half up the road and walked down to the Burrow, hoping that someone would see me coming and just assume I'd gone for a long walk. For a moment, it looked like luck was on my side: Mum was sitting outside on her rocking chair knitting, obviously waiting for me. The windows of the house glowed with warm light; their placement telling me that Bill and Charlie were still playing Exploding Snap or Wizarding Chess down in the kitchen like they did every night when they were both home, Ginny was up reading, and Ron had probably already gone to bed. Dad was just coming outside with a pot of tea when I reached the porch steps.

"Where is George?" Mum demanded before I even had a chance to greet them, setting down her knitting and fixing me to the spot with her stare.

"Probably at the shop, I wouldn't know," I said, shrugging. I tried to look innocent, but I was never very good at lying. I'm not sure how Mum had guessed that I'd been with him, but now that she had stated it outright, it was going to be hard to backtrack without annoying her.

"Percival Ignatius Weasley, where is your brother?"

There was no way I was going to escape this without a row. Either Mum was going to row with me over not telling her about George, or George was going to despise me for ratting him out to Mum. My standing in the family was so fragile, it was hard to figure out which would cause the more damage. I took a deep breath and tried to collect my thoughts.

"I'm not sure, Mum." It wasn't the delaying babble I had intended to go with, but I knew it was the only thing I could really say. Rowing with Mum was simply a daily fact of life in the Burrow; she was always going at it with one of us. George, on the other hand, he was already so isolated. I didn't want to take away whatever reason had compelled him to allow me to stay that afternoon.

"The two of you left this afternoon. Where did you go? Everyone kept asking after the two of you at the wake-"

"Nobody was here to see me, Mother. Nobody _wants_ to see _me._ We all know that I was dead to the lot of you for the last two years. I imagine that George just needed some space. He has a lot he's dealing with right now, and hours of people trying to offer their condolences was not going to do him any good."

"Don't try to tell me what he's dealing with!" Mum shouted. "I know exactly what he's going through, and hiding away from all of us isn't going to make it any better-"

"He's not you!" I snapped. "If he wants to be alone, then for God's sake, let him! He's not a child; he knows what he needs and how to ask for it. If he wanted you to console him, he'd be here right now, not hiding out. All you're doing is suffocating him, and the rest of us, trying to make everything be okay when it's not. It is so absolutely not okay that not even Fred could make it funny if he were still with us!"

I regretted the words instantly, but there was no way I could take them back.

Mum deflated. Her chin wobbled and tears welled up in her eyes. I felt like a terrible person. Would I ever stop hurting her? She gave me a reproachful look as she fought back tears.

"George shouldn't be alone," she said quietly, the words cutting straight to my heart. "It's not good to be alone when-" The tears spilled then, and I looked away. Shame burned my cheeks.

"I'm sorry, Mum," I said quietly, and kissed her cheek. I went inside before either she or Dad could say anything else.

Bill and Charlie jumped as I walked in. So they'd been eavesdropping. Fabulous. I didn't say anything to them, just trudged to the stairs. One of them followed me for a couple of steps, but stopped. Ginny and Ron were standing on the landing outside of my room. Their doors were open, and I could see that Ginny's window, at least, was open as well. So they'd heard, too.

"You're a weaselly git, Percy," Ron said, and pushed his way past me, running down the stairs to God-knew-where. Probably to go sit with Bill and Charlie and try to pretend like everything was normal.

I turned and looked at Ginny. "Anything you'd like to add to that assessment?" I asked calmly.

"No."

I nodded and opened the door to my room.

"You've treated Mum terribly, but it was good of you to defend George."

I turned around and looked at her. Somehow, my baby sister had grown up in the time I'd been away from the family, changed from an awkward little girl to a confident young woman. She held her ground and didn't run away like she would have before, afraid of any sort of conflict in the house. I nodded at her.

"I'm already on everyone's bad side. Least I can do is try to use it to help," I muttered.

"Try to do it nicer next time," she said. "And tell George I miss him."

"Ginny-"

"Not _now,_ idiot. Just... For whatever reason, he's letting you in. So obviously he thinks that you'll understand. Try to, and try not to screw it up, and when he's willing to see the rest of us again, then tell him."

I nodded. "Alright. Promise."

She ran down the stairs as well and I let myself into my room. I wondered if I would ever stop feeling like an outsider in my own home as I crawled into bed. It definitely seemed time to go back to my own London flat; staying here was just making all the old wounds raw again.

I woke up just before dawn the next morning and slipped notes under everyone's doors. I apologized to Mum Dad and explained why I thought this was best, wished Charlie a safe trip back to Romania, invited Ron and Ginny to drop in anytime, and gave my regards to Bill and Fleur. It was the coward's way out, but there didn't seem any other options. I was the family black sheep, and for now there didn't seem to be much of a way out of that role. As I had said to Ginny the night before, the least I could do was try to use that vantage point as outsider to help.

I Apparated back to my flat and set about preparing myself for the day. The weekend was over and it was time to head back to work. With everything at the Ministry still in shambles, there was no way I could take the day to just sit around in my pajamas and drink tea and sulk like I wanted to.

I dropped by George's on the way to leave him some breakfast on the counter and a note telling him I'd drop by at lunchtime. It was the least I could do.


	13. Chapter 13

I didn't wake up until noon. It was the first time I'd slept more than an hour or two at a time in the last six months, and I was honestly amazed at how much better I felt. I was still bone-weary, but my brain was more alert than it had been for weeks. I took a look at my foot, which was blistered from the burns and altogether the worse for wear. Taking care of it was going to be bloody awful.

My whole body felt stiff and sore as I pulled myself up out of bed and limped downstairs to the shop to look for a first aid kit. Angelina or Percy had opened up some of the shutters before leaving the night before, and bright sunlight filtered through the dust, shining on all sorts of boxes and displays. In the brightness, everything looked drab and dismal, and I frowned. It shouldn't be like this. The shop should be open already. I needed to get it together and hurry up the re-opening. The longer we sat dormant, the further behind we were getting.

I heard a noise in the kitchen and pulled out my wand to investigate. I was still in war mode, checking everything out with a caution that was foreign to my actual nature, and although I wondered when I would stop behaving this way, it didn't bother me too much. I was slipping into an apathetic rut, but it seemed better than so many of the alternatives.

The kitchen door opened as I was about to turn the handle, and Angelina laughed.

"You scared me," she said. "I was just about to go upstairs and check on you."

"I'm fine, Angie, really."

"How's the foot?" she asked pointedly, leaning over to get a glimpse. She flinched at the sight of the ugly blisters and peeling skin. "Sit down, you don't want it to get infected."

I obeyed, wondering when my life had taken a left turn into unrecognizability. "I really can take care of it myself," I said as she came back with the first aid kit and started sifting through the different healing potions in it.

"Right. Sorry." She handed me the box and took a step back. "I just thought you might want some help."

I shrugged, opening up a bottle of a burn healing potion. "I'm not really sure what I'm doing at any given moment. Kind of hard to need help if you don't even know what's coming up. And I don't want to keep you out of your way; you probably have to get to work and stuff at some point, right?"

Angelina shrugged, shifting her weight from foot to foot. "I actually had to quit my job six months ago. When You-Know-Who took over the Ministry and started going after Muggle-borns, it wasn't safe to be trackable. So I quit, and moved out of my flat."

I flinched, trying to conceal it as a reaction to the gruesome stinging of burn potion on my foot. "I'm glad they didn't find you."

"They nearly did. I found out a week later from Katie that my boss had gone missing. She still hasn't turned up. I'm certain that they were looking for me and took her to be questioned and..." She shivered. "I just keep thinking that it could have been me who disappeared."

I put the potion bottle down - my foot was decently healed now, covered in shiny, new piglet-pink skin that was dulling out and fading to normal color as we spoke - and held out a hand to her. She looked at me strangely, but took it, and I pulled her toward me and kicked the chair next to me out for her.

"Don't play the what if game, Angie," I said, squeezing her hand as she sat down.

"I could have kept her safe, if I'd told her to run-"

I shook my head. "If they wanted you that badly, they'd have found someone else to go after. If it wasn't your boss, it'd have been a coworker, a friend, your mum or Sophie or Gran."

She shrugged, but I could see in her face that she was struggling with the idea. I got up and started filling the kettle.

"Do you think we're ever going to stop living this war in our heads?" she asked suddenly. "Or do you think it's going to stay with us forever, like a ghost?"

I shook my head. "Who can say? But if it's going to haunt us, the least it could do is have the decency to be a poltergeist and keep things interesting."

Angelina laughed. "A poltergeist? What, do you want the world destroyed? Going to set up shop as the next Dark Lord to keep things interesting?"

I laughed. "But One-Eared George just doesn't sound all that threatening, and it's awfully difficult to get people to take you seriously as George the Terrible or Weasley the Heinous when you've only got one ear and everyone knows it got hexed off by a greasy git of a potionsmaster. I think I'll have to pass; my dignity wouldn't be able to sustain the mockery of anything less than a fabulous - and fitting - villain name."

Angelina grinned at me, the first time I'd seen her smile without reservation since Hogwarts. "I don't know, it's really just a small group that knows what happened to the ear. I'm sure you could put it about that it got bitten off by a troll in Moldova, whom you subsequently killed with your bare hands."

"Hm, Moldova. Does have a certain ring to it, if I can figure out what I was doing there. I'll have to remember that one to tell Bill and Fleur's kid when it's old enough to ask questions."

Angelina's eyebrows shot up. "Fleur's not already-"

"No, no, not yet, but she's already picking out names for when the time comes. You should see the look on old Billy's face when she does it, too. Absolute comedy gold. _Especially _when Mum chimes in with suggestions."

"Bet he wishes he hadn't given up the goblins and curse-breaking now," Angelina said.

I shook my head as the tea kettle whistled. "Nah. Bill's a braver man than that, and he's always wanted to have little ankle-biters. I just don't think he thought it'd happen so soon after tying the knot. But Fleur's all gung-ho about the idea, and with Mum encouraging her, it can't be long now before we all get a happy announcement."

"Won't that be special."

I poured two mugs of tea and sat back down next to Angelina, passing her one of the cups. She summoned a package of biscuits from across the kitchen and we snickered together over our teacups for a few minutes.

"I've missed you," Angelina whispered after we had both contained our giggles.

I nodded. "I've missed you, too."

Her smile was sad. "I keep wondering how everyone can pick up and move forward. After something so terrible, how does the world keep spinning?"

This line of conversation made me uncomfortable, but unlike when Mum veered off like this, I was pretty sure that Angie wasn't doing it to try to get me to talk about my feelings, so I handed her another biscuit. "Because it has to."

"So," she said, sitting back and forcing her tone lighter, "when's the date for Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes's Grand Re-Opening?"

"Haven't set one."

"Not even a target?"

"Nope. Still too much to do, and no idea how long it'll take me to do it. What about you, what are your plans now that the battles are over?"

Angelina shrugged. "Find a new job, I guess, and move off of Sophie's couch. I'm sure she'd really like to be able to have her boyfriend sleep over again without worrying what I'll overhear. He's been noticeably absent lately." She made a face and I laughed.

"I can't believe she's old enough to be living on her own now," I mumbled. "I'll never forget the last time I saw her, she looked so young."

Angelina nodded. "She's still young."

"You know what I mean. I still can't believe Ginny's going to be in her last year at Hogwarts, either."

"Time marches on."

"The earth keeps spinning."

"Because it has to." She made a sad little noise in the back of her throat, then tossed back the last of her tea. "I can't believe we're already a pair of old people and we're only twenty."

I laughed, but there wasn't much humor in it. We _were _a pair of old people; we'd seen far more than what anyone should have to see by our time. "What better time to become a pair of old people? Leaves us plenty of time for chasing kids off our lawns and reminiscing about when we were their age. How glorious things were and how we really thought we'd live forever."

"Okay, we're going to need to be a whole lot drunker for that conversation," Angelina said loudly, patting my shoulder. "I, for one, am not yet ready to give up the ghost, declare Hogwarts my glory days, and consign myself to a slow decay into the grave. I suggest you find the will and the courage to do the same, Mister Weasley."

"Oh, don't call me that," I groaned. "It makes me feel like I'm either really old or really young and about to be in serious trouble."

"I'll make a deal with you."

"What deal?" I had learned from a lifetime with Fred that you never blindly agree to anything, even (and especially) if it's the person you trust most asking.

"I won't call you Mister Weasley, and I'll help you get the shop ready for re-opening. In exchange, you let me crash on your sofa until I find a job and my own place. I can't live with Sophie anymore, or I'm going to kill her."

I wasn't entirely certain I liked this plan; I wasn't sure I could handle having another person in our flat and our shop, messing up things that we had done together and chasing away the last of the tangible memories of Fred here in this place that was completely and totally _ours_, but I had to do something. I couldn't preserve the shop like a museum and still be true to what we had dreamed together, to what I had promised him. And besides, I was already nodding.

"Deal," I said, and we shook on it.


End file.
